


A Walk in the Park

by Esmethewitch



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Adoption, Dialogue Heavy, Finn & Poe got married and adopted a bunch of kids, Finn is a Good Dad, Finn-centric (Star Wars), Gen, Kidfic, Past Child Abuse, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, baby stormtroopers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:33:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26508265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esmethewitch/pseuds/Esmethewitch
Summary: Finn and Poe go to a park with their new family. This trip brings up unwanted memories for one of their children. Finn does his best to help her come to terms with them.
Relationships: Finn & Original Child Character, Poe Dameron/Finn
Comments: 4
Kudos: 27





	A Walk in the Park

“We just finished the longest trail loop in this park”, said Poe Dameron, wiping the sweat from his brow with his sleeve. “I think we can stop here to rest for a bit before going back to the speeder.” BB-8 whirred peevishly and opened one of his side panels, dislodging a pinecone. 

Eleven young pairs of eyes stared at him inquisitively. They were not tired at all. Finn smiled, taking in the mossy trees and the children’s quiet contentment at a long walk. The kids were wearing his husband out. Though to Poe’s credit, he had got them through their morning routine, supervised them as homework was finally finished and paint splattered their floor, planned this trip, and got everybody to the toilet and into the speeder. Finn was officially working but he’d had an easy morning; caught up on some legal datawork and had a leisurely holomeeting with Leia Organa and Rose.

A family this large required dedication and hard work from both of them. If anyone had told Finn years ago that he’d be raising ten ex-Stormtrooper cadets plus one unexpected Haysian orphan outside of the First Order, he’d have laughed. But if Poe Dameron had been added to this hypothetical deal, he would have said: “sign me up!” They didn’t have much personal time these days, but that made the moments they could spend in each other’s arms all the more precious. 

Finn hadn’t been to this nature park yet, and he was happy to explore the winding paths through the forest and wide expanses of grass with his family. Yavin 4 was beautiful, though the responsibilities of looking after eleven children who suffered from recurring nightmares and working with Senators to direct treaty-writing and fair resettlement policies meant he didn’t have much time to explore it.

“There’s benches up that way,” Poe said, gesturing to a larger walk paved with bricks. The twins, Joe and Moe (they wanted to give themselves names that rhymed) sprinted ahead. As they walked, a brightly painted play structure came into view. 

“Can we stop there to play?”, Katie (formerly K8-T3269) asked, preparing to beg and pout. 

Finn and Poe glanced at each other. The sun was hot and they’d been here for the whole afternoon, but if the children ran around, that would give them time to sit on park benches and grumble about becoming old men. Tired children were also easier to coax back into a speeder.

“Sure,” said Poe. “Just stay in the play area, and stay with a buddy, and keep within shouting distance of us…”

As one child, they stampeded towards the swings, slides, and climbing towers, BB-8 in tow. Well, almost one child. One girl hung back. Her fists were clenched, nails digging into her palms. She sweated more than could be expected even in the heat of a Yavin 4 summer, and she stared at the ground. When she glanced up and saw Finn and Poe observing her, she began to shake.

“Five-oh?” Poe’s brow furrowed in concern. “Buddy? You okay there?”

“I’m  _ fine,”  _ Five-oh spat. This was a cue that she most certainly was not. Five-oh stuck out from the rest of Finn and Poe’s kids. Most of them ranged in age from six to ten or eleven, as far as they knew. Five-oh was a gangly girl of fourteen, tan skin pockmarked with acne. She’d recently got the permission and the means to dye her own hair, so her straight, dark tresses were streaked with red and purple. She painted her nails black. Some of their visitors did a double-take when they saw her, but Finn tried to take these people aside and gently remind them that this girl’s appearance had been policed from the moment she was born; if she wanted to dye her hair and braid flowers into it, paint her nails, and wear ripped clothing, then she could do it, and it would be good for her. 

Apparently, she’d been found beside the bodies of the rest of her squad and five Resistance soldiers. Finn’s knowledge of the First Order’s combat practices warred with the stronger instinct to dismiss anything the person who told him this said as banthashit. Regardless, Five-oh’s traumas ran a little deeper than those of her younger siblings. 

After being a child soldier until the age of eleven, some kriffers with twisted notions of what made a family had snatched her up. The sort of people who should never have been allowed children at all, but knew all the right answers to the questions adoption agencies asked. Or perhaps they didn’t; things were a mess right after the war. 

They wanted to get a poor little baby stormtrooper to keep their pet Haysian orphan company. Never mind the question of how they planned to integrate the care of two traumatized children of diametrically opposed cultural backgrounds. Thank the stars that Five-oh wanted to make Sergeant once, and claimed the younger girl as her own personal charge. On top of everything, Five-oh’s “parents” named her “Trixie”.When Poe said that burdening a child with such a name should have tipped off Child Services, Five-oh smiled for the first time and released her vice- like grip on Hai’s shoulder. 

But then, Hai broke down, sobbing about how it wasn’t right for them to take her big sister away. Just when things were at their worst, Rose stormed in, fuming about cultural insensitivity and dodgy paperwork. “It’s worse than we thought. They don’t have documentation for Hai either. As far as we know, they could have just grabbed her out of a refugee camp.” She gasped when she saw the child in question was in the room, but Hai just grinned and said:

“Does that mean I’m not really their daughter? If I’m not, can I go with Trixie? Pleee-ase? Or if I can’t go with her, can I go with you, Miss?”

In the present, Hai ran ahead of her sister, braids flying. Five-oh (“Trixie” was definitely a no, but nothing else quite fit. She remembered her designation, and that was nice and familiar) stood alone and blinked back tears. 

Five-oh liked Poe (everybody did), but he didn’t  _ get  _ what it was like to be a trooper. Nobody who didn’t spend the years other children spent holding paintbrushes and dollies holding a laser blaster ever would.

“Hey,” Finn said softly, “Five-oh, there are some interesting...trees with some cool flower-looking things that you might want to see, right around the bend. I can show them to you” He truly was ignorant about much of nature; Poe had to point out Kowakian Monkey-lizards to him and reassure him that he was not hallucinating things. He coughed meaningfully in Poe’s direction. Five-oh would rather have gutted herself with Kes Dameron’s old Jogan-Fruit machete than admit weakness. She had been a good soldier, once.

“Right,” said Poe. “I’ll meet back up with you two in half an hour, I’ll be at the playground but comm me if you need anything.”

Finn nodded, and led the girl away. They walked down the path, and stopped at a bench that overlooked a river. “This a good spot?”, he asked.

Five-oh nodded, tears streaming down her face. Finn sat down on the bench. Five-oh sat down, but scooted over as far way from him as she could. Snot burbled from her nostrils, and she rubbed her sleeves over her eyes. Finn handed her a tissue. He’d quickly learned to keep a travel packet of tissues in his pocket at all times since the children’s arrival. She took it. 

“S-sorry,” she said. “We’re trying to h-have a n-nice outing, and I’ve got to go ruin it…”

“You don’t have to apologize. You aren’t ruining anything. When you feel like talking about it, could you tell me what’s going on today?”

Five-oh cried some more. She started picking at the polish on her fingers. “Joan and Rodgir used to take us to the playground in the park.”

Finn bit his lip. Joan and Rodgir were the names of the people who’d “adopted” Five-oh and Hai sometime after the end of the war. They didn’t beat the children with a stick and lock them in the cellar to starve, but there were other ways to hurt a child. Finn knew this all too well. When he couldn’t sleep at night, it was because he heard a voice whispering that he was an ungrateful traitor. “Alright. Was it nice to get out?”

“No. They took us there for an hour every day. They made us play for the full time.”

She twisted up the tissue. “Hai didn’t mind. She was the right age to be going to the playground. Still is. But Joan insisted that I play too. At first I thought that she just wanted me to supervise Hai. I could do that. I’d push her on the swings, catch her when she went down the slide. But that wasn’t enough for Joan. Joan kept insisting that I’d ‘missed key developmental stages’ because the Order didn’t really let us play. So then, when I was eleven, I had to.” She sniffled some more.

“I was too big to be there. The other kids, they were all little. And then, there was me. But Joan wouldn’t let me leave or hang around the edge. If I stopped, she’d yell at me. In front of the other moms, the other kids. Finally, I told her that if she wanted me to imitate a little kid I could piss and shit myself too, but she just said I was stupid, ungrateful, and that…” a new wave of sobbing broke, crested, and fell, “that I was lucky I had them, that everyone else would be scared of me because I was a trooper. That nobody else would ever w-want me.”

“She was wrong,” Finn declared. “I’m glad you’re here. So’s Poe. And Hai. And the rest of us. We want you. And there’s a whole galaxy of people you haven’t met yet.”

“I k-know…” she trailed off, pinching up her features. Her brown eyes were red from crying. “It’s just...it’s STUPID, how I am today.”

“There’s nothing stupid about seeing something that reminded you of bad things in the past and crying. It’s normal.”

“Yeah, but I…I KILLED people, Finn. I shot them. I know that was bad. But thinking about them doesn’t make me feel as bad as I do when I think about Rodgir and Joan and the playground. Does that make me an evil person?” She hugged her knees to her chest.

“No,” Finn said, choosing his words carefully. “You shot at those people because you’d been trained to do it. Because you thought they were going to kill you. You did what was asked of you. And you didn’t enjoy it. But with the playground, you tried your best and you were humiliated instead. You were degraded, and told that it was for your own good. That had to hurt.”

“Hmm. Yeah. It does. It was awful, and I wanted to kill Joan. But it’s not, like, the same level of bad. I shouldn’t be so upset about it.”

Finn sighed. “We went to a playground today.”

“So?”

“We didn’t go to a Star Destroyer, or the battlefields of Exegol. We have no plans to go there. When’s the last time you were in a place like that?”

“Three years ago.”

“If we went back to an old Destroyer or battlefield, you might react in the same way. I don’t think it makes sense to rank all of your traumas and give each one an acceptable reaction.”

“But it’s not all the same!”

“Rationally, it’s not, but it still all hurt you. And that doesn’t make you weak, it just means that you’ve been in a bunch of really kriffed-up places. Does this make sense?”

“I guess.” Five-oh took a few deep breaths. “Okay. I’m good for now, I think. But I don’t want to go back there.”

“You don’t have to. We can meet up with Poe and the other kids a bit later, in a different part of the park. I have a comm. We have time.”

“Alright. Thanks.” She scooted over to his side of the bench and hugged him, burying her face in his shoulder. They sat like that for a long time.


End file.
